Draper: Ten Hag has his work cut out to fix the problems at Man Utd

"there has been resistance from some to heavyweight, demanding tactical sessions."

If that's true, ship out everyone pushing back on hard work.
 
Bastian said:
We need one centre back in order to have two competent ones (and yet Varane is suspect in terms of injuries), unless Laird is going to be promoted to the first XI we are a right back short, we need a new midfield, that's two, and we cannot go into a season with only one recognised striker pushing 40. So that's five. Six if you want a right sided attacker, given our most promising player is awaiting trial.

Not all of these will be elite players, maybe only one or none, but they'll need to be a lot better than what we have, which is a low bar. Thankfully, or hopefully, we have footballing people taking charge now and they'll use our resources as they're meant to be used, smartly.
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Meh. Some coaching can improve a lot of what we have/reduce what we need. For me, 3 signings would be fine, given they are the right ones. Say for example we sign Darwin, Timber and De Jong.

Ronaldo Darwin Sancho
Fred de Jong Bruno
Shaw Varane Maguire Timber
De Gea

Hannibal Rashford Elanga
Van de Beek Garner McTominay
Telles Lindelof Tuanzebe Dalot
Heaton​

We could well have something like this next year with 3 signings. We aren't in the CL, so we don't need that much depth really. It's fine to have a few youngsters as deeper cover, even guys like Garnacho to give more depth and some first team exposure. That's a strong starting 11, and while nobody loves the idea of Maguire, realistically he's gonna be given a chance to improve through coaching. Tuanzebe is really 5th choice CB and you can just put Mengi there instead, as Timber would come inside and Dalot go to right back with any injuries. Any further signings would require sales of players who probably aren't leaving this summer. Then next summer we take the next steps.

I expect a huge improvement just from coaching, but also in the squad morale by not having a stupidly bloated squad. That was one of the biggest problems this season and led to so many morale problems. It pretty much solves itself with all the departures, and being in Europa League means we don't need to address it as urgently.
 
Hats off to Ole. Did nothing to clear this mess and just kept hoarding players who have now created this toxic atmosphere. Basically abolished any sort of discipline left by bigging up every Tom, Dick and Harry(Maguire?) in the squad.
 
The press are hugely underestimating the magnitude of Ed Woodward finally f**king off.

I can only see us moving forward from here to be honest, regardless of who the manager is. The club has been run appallingly, almost criminally badly by Ed and his cronies and they have made it impossible for a succession of managers.
 
bosnian_red said:
Meh. Some coaching can improve a lot of what we have/reduce what we need. For me, 3 signings would be fine, given they are the right ones. Say for example we sign Darwin, Timber and De Jong.

Ronaldo Darwin Sancho
Fred de Jong Bruno
Shaw Varane Maguire Timber
De Gea

Hannibal Rashford Elanga
Van de Beek Garner McTominay
Telles Lindelof Tuanzebe Dalot
Heaton​

We could well have something like this next year with 3 signings. We aren't in the CL, so we don't need that much depth really. It's fine to have a few youngsters as deeper cover, even guys like Garnacho to give more depth and some first team exposure. That's a strong starting 11, and while nobody loves the idea of Maguire, realistically he's gonna be given a chance to improve through coaching. Tuanzebe is really 5th choice CB and you can just put Mengi there instead, as Timber would come inside and Dalot go to right back with any injuries. Any further signings would require sales of players who probably aren't leaving this summer. Then next summer we take the next steps.

I expect a huge improvement just from coaching, but also in the squad morale by not having a stupidly bloated squad. That was one of the biggest problems this season and led to so many morale problems. It pretty much solves itself with all the departures, and being in Europa League means we don't need to address it as urgently.
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The issue with the high amount of trust you've put in a bunch of underperforming and overpaid players is if they can't perform to the expected level(which is a genuine possibility) you'll still have a huge workload in the rebuild come next year in positions like GK, LB, CB and CM with the possibility of a RW/LW if Rashford can't cut it another year that's a lot of key positions to neglect. You're also massively underestimating how much depth we need for the EL it's not a light competition.
With the level of competition in the PL right now there's next to no margin for error and we can't afford to keep pushing important positions an extra year like we've been doing in Midfield.
We have to get a CB and LB this year to minimize risk. Lack of trust in Maguire aside it's foolish to keep Axel when his contract is up in a year and letting him go for free when you can get money now and Mengi is still at least 2yrs away from being ready we need depth there this summer. Telles is worse than Darmian which tells you a lot he doesn't even start for our U23s we need a LB even it's someone young and cheap to compete with Shaw. Ideally we need another mid but we could probably do with FDJ only if VDB/Hannibal/Garner get bigger roles. RW can wait till next year to see how Rashford/Sancho do with a new attacking RB. GK van also wait a year but it should be those 3 positions max
 
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It’s a good thing Ten Hag goes into this with no hair already.
 
Course he has his work cut out, sounds like it's hard enough to get this group of players to put the proper effort in training never mind coaching them to be a cohesive unit.

This is going to be very long process situations like Maguires aren't going to be sorted out this summer.
 
RkkMan said:
The issue with the high amount of trust you've put in a bunch of underperforming and overpaid players is if they can't perform to the expected level(which is a genuine possibility) you'll still have a huge workload in the rebuild come next year in positions like GK, LB, CB and CM with the possibility of a RW/LW if Rashford can't cut it another year that's a lot of key positions to neglect. You're also massively underestimating how much depth we need for the EL it's not a light competition.
With the level of competition in the PL right now there's next to no margin for error and we can't afford to keep pushing important positions an extra year like we've been doing in Midfield.
We have to get a CB and LB this year to minimize risk. Lack of trust in Maguire aside it's foolish to keep Axel when his contract is up in a year and letting him go for free when you can get money now and Mengi is still at least 2yrs away from being ready we need depth there this summer. Telles is worse than Darmian which tells you a lot he doesn't even start for our U23s we need a LB even it's someone young and cheap to compete with Shaw. Ideally we need another mid but we could probably do with FDJ only if VDB/Hannibal/Garner get bigger roles. RW can wait till next year to see how Rashford/Sancho do with a new attacking RB. GK van also wait a year but it should be those 3 positions max
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I agree ideally we'd replace Telles as he's useless, just not sure it's happen, and generally Shaw should be more fit than he was this season anyway. That alone would solve the issue. Axel is just a name, like I said, timber will hopefully come in who is a CB who can play RB. We get him in and he'll rotate between the 2 positions and whoever the 5th CB is would barely play anyway, barring an injury crisis. As you said, De Jong is probably enough in midfield for next season and we'll be ok with depth with VdB and Garner and Hannibal having bigger roles, while in attack someone like Darwin is a must and would leave Rashford and elanga as backups anyway. Ideally we can do more, but 3 of the right ones is a good start.
 
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